Mind, not Morals
by Joelle8
Summary: She lives through him, and it's so wrong that it must be right by default.  **WARNING: RATED T FOR A REASON.**


_**WARNING: THIS IS RATED **_**T _FOR A REASON. NOTHING IS EXPLICIT; HOWEVER, IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH MENTIONS OF SEX, READ WITH CAUTION._**

_**Summary: She lives through him, and it's so wrong that it must be right by default.**_

_**Inspirational quote: "To educate a man in mind and not morals is to educate a menace to society."- Bishop Eddie L. Long**_

Mind, not Morals

She _is _smart, you know.

Don't give her that look; you're just like all the rest. Always judging her, pointing fingers, saying that because she didn't go to Radcliffe like perfect little _Grace_, she can't be smart. Beatrice _must _be brainless, because stayed home and perfected the art of Presentation and learned to be a top-notch housewife.

-No one has more influence on a powerful man than the woman he sleeps with.-

So no, Beatrice _didn't _go to college, and she _didn't _necessarily get the best grades in the world. But that doesn't mean she's not smart- it just means that she has an entirely different kind of intelligence from all the rest.

_He _could see this. It was ironic, really, because he was a Harvard-student Ekat; if anyone thinks that education makes a [wo]man, it's _that _type of person, Beatrice believes. Yet he wasn't just book-smart; he was _people_-smart too, with the suavity of a Lucian.

And she? She had the cunning of one.

Maybe this was what brought them together. Both confined to their different branches; both desperate to have at least a taste of liberation; both containing a side of _evilevilevil_, just waiting to go in for the kill. So what if it was forbidden? So what if it was _wrong_? It was _freedom_, and that was all that mattered.

It was just a summer fling, without enough heart in it to even be called a romance.

XxxxX

They meet when he's in college and she's in between marriages. They're stuck at the same Cahill function, awkwardly squished next to each other, and he suddenly blurts out, "So, do you come here often?"

She laughs- a real, true laugh, because he's so delightfully awkward that it's practically an _invitation _for her to corrupt him. "Not unless I can help it," she answers, her face molding into a carefully-practiced smirk, "but I find myself coerced into it sometimes; I suspect it happens to all of us Cahills at one point or another. And you?"

"The same," he nods, sticking out his hand. "Alistair Oh, by the way."

"Beatrice Cahill," she replies, placing her hand delicately in his.

As he lifts the hand to his lips and presses a feather-light kiss to it, her eyes widen in surprise; he catches her gaze, and she knows that they're playing the same game.

That's fine by her. After all, when it comes down to it, it all ends in sin anyways (but she doesn't believe in God, so she's unperturbed by that).

XxxxX

It's an affair, pure and simple. They're not seeing each other on the side from someone else, no; what they're betraying are _morals_, the classic sense of right-and-wrong, what society accepts. She's 37 to his 20, they _share a grandfather_, they're not even doing this for _love_. All of it's just for satisfaction, attention, _venting_, freeing themselves from their other lives.

They don't just have sex; they talk, too. She tells him about what a scumbag her ex-husband was, about his _actual _affair; in turn, he tells her all about growing up as an orphan with his cruel uncle. He also tells her about college life, his youthful actions; she revels in these stories, because they remind her of the good old days, when she was young, confident, could've conquered the world.

She lives through him, and when she adds that to all the other _ohso _wicked parts of their "relationship," it's so wrong that it must be right by default.

XxxxX

Eventually, though, things start to go wrong. The sex becomes less important than talking to him, hearing what's on his mind; he starts to realize just how much _older _she is than him, and how old her _body_ is.

She becomes more and more _into _him, in the universally right way (which means it's _wrongwrongwrong_). At the same time, he loses the interest he had in her; the original allure gradually disappears, leaving only a vague disgust for ever having done /that/ with _her_. It would be a cliché- the sexual partners falling in love- if it wasn't one-sided, and so instead, it's a tragedy, in its plainest, most heartb r e a k i n g way.

Beatrice has never much liked pain, and she knows full well that that's all this affair will bring her. They break it off at the same time, for those very different reasons that one of them (_guess which one?_) will never guess.

XxxxX

It was just a summer fling, cut off before enough heart would be lost to even call it a romance.

**_Yes, this is an entirely new level of wrong. Even for me. But I actually really like this piece despite that; it's pretty original, methinks._**

**_I'm back, people, and I'm going to bring a new meaning to the word "crack!ship."_**

**_You've been warned._**

**_Thanks so much for reading, and pleasepleaseplease review,_**

**_Joelle8_**

**_P.S. Disclaimed_**

**_P.P.S. If you're uncomfortable with the mentions of sex, I'm sorry, but I DID warn you. So don't complain to me about it._**


End file.
